


i'll crawl home to her

by stellalucem



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Bond (Star Wars), Good Boy Sweater, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Nudity, Planet Jakku (Star Wars), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-TRoS, Showers, The World Between Worlds (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-23
Updated: 2020-10-23
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:42:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27168802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellalucem/pseuds/stellalucem
Summary: It's been months since the incident on Exegol, and Rey still feels like a part of her has been torn out. She's lost her other half of the dyad, but maybe Ben Solo's still there, somewhere in the universe...
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Reylo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 35





	i'll crawl home to her

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This was so emotional, poetic, and almost therapeutic to write, because I'm still a wreck over TROS ten months later - can you believe it's been that long? I hope you enjoy it, and it helps fill your Reylo hearts after what DLF gave us in Episode (Title is from Hozier's "Work Song" + the song lyrics at the end are from "Compass" by Zella Day)

_No grave can hold my body down. I’ll crawl home to her._

……

Water poured down on Rey from the showerhead, warm and soothing. The shower was steamy and smelt of nature.

Soapy bubbles covered her shoulders, sinking down her body as she stood, facing the water as it rained down on her, pensive. Her hands trailed along her skin, tanned and freckled.

Every shower was like shaking off an old layer to reveal a new skin, cleansed and refreshed, leaving the past and what it meant behind. But then it always came back. The pain and the longing. Slowly, she formed the words on her lips, gently running the tips of her fingers on her breasts, circling the rosy nipples, feeling the goosebumps rise.

B-e-n.

_Ben._

_The boy she never really got to know._

_The boy she still searched for._

_A wound, a cut, that couldn’t seem to stop bleeding, months after Exegol._

_And every few weeks, it seemed to scab up, only for the dam to break again._

_It was like a part of her was missing._

_And that was because it_ **_was_ ** _._

The water tickled her as she removed her hands and shut it off with a squeak, twisting the old, rusty knob of the showers at her new home, wet with steam and condensation.

She had travelled back to Jakku - to the only home that she ever truly knew - and set up life there in a new house. It wasn’t the prettiest, but it was home. Finn, Poe Dameron, and her other close friends from the Resistance would come to visit her once in a while between peace-making and piloting, and she would often head to their base, but the truth was that she often felt empty now.

Steadily, she stepped out of the shower, tile on the floor slippery to her feet, blistered from years and years in the desert. Her drenched, damp hair clung to her face and neck, miniscule strands getting stuck between her lips before she tugged them away.

Rey got on her tippy-toes, pulling down a towel from her gray- and beige-toned stack, eyes on the window, dusty from the dry sand grains, flying past at all times of the day. If she cleaned and had to get it wet, it would be even worse off.

Just a few weeks ago, a storm had passed by, and she had been forced to pull out her old, worn-down goggles and beige raw silk clothing from about three years prior, when she had been a different girl, unaware of her abilities with the force and with Kylo Ren unaware of her mere existence. She was a scavenger, living a simple life. Was that girl happier?

Her lightsaber was lying in the room next door, a bright blue flame when it lit up, a powerful weapon for those trained in the force, like her. Like Kylo Ren. Like _Ben Solo._

Even still, every day, she would go out and look for him. Ben.

She knew that he would come back for her, from wherever he was, lost in the universe, but the question was, when? How long would she be willing to wait for her other part in the dyad, the man who she had kissed on Exegol, mere minutes before losing him, disappeared without a trace other than his clothes. She had clutched his sweater tightly then, like she would never let go.

Why did it seem like, every time she got close to something, it got burned. She lost it.

Ruffling the towel through her hair and pulling out the knots and split ends, tossing them into a nearby metal can, Rey gave herself a little massage on her temples, trying to stop the tears that threatened to form in her eyes.

But they did, anyway. They always did, hot and dripping down her face. They tasted salty, slipping in between her lips, wetting her pillow with a liquid more sad than anything else.

It was like she was five again, suddenly an orphan with her parents gone and nowhere to go, forced to build up a new life by herself and be brave and strong.

The thing was, Rey did not want a new life again, because she was still trying to pick up the pieces and make sense of her current one. Rey Palpatine, was that who she really was? Rey Skywalker didn’t feel right, not at all, and Rey Solo felt selfish and intrusive.

She was just Rey Nobody, _Rey from Nowhere_ , just like all those years ago. Three years. She could count them on one hand, all of the years that she had known Ben, watching him transform from a monster to the kind, loving, strong man that she knew had always laid beneath that hard exterior, fighting to keep his true self hidden under wraps for the majority of his life.

Rey let the towels drop to the floor, suddenly, taking small steps toward her room as the tears just kept falling, like a sink she couldn’t quite get to turn off, the knob permanently stuck on one setting. 

The floor was slightly dusty, dirty, but so was everything else. Even she felt dirty, clean but not, when she looked deep inside.

At night, she would wander outside, curling up her knees to her chest as she sat on a spare piece of scrap metal. Her hair would be pulled up in her classic three bubble braid style, her neutral garments stained in the slightest from practical use, the effects of living on a desert planet. She would look up at the stars in the sky above, count them, as the wind brushed through her small baby strands. She would wonder if Ben was up there with Leia, with the stars, looking down at her each night, smiling sadly.

The force kept telling her that he was there, beside her, somehow, but _where?_ She never saw him, not even in visions, but, sometimes, in strange dreams, waking up in cold sweat as she saw herself poised up on a dark throne, sitting on his lap like a well-trained pet. He was gone, disappeared, so why did his soul still linger, trying to find who he lost that day, when they had defeated Emperor Palpatine after generations of suffering, side by side. A dyad in the force, through and through, equally light and dark. _Balance._

It seemed like everyone said that they knew her, but, on the other hand, they didn’t. Didn’t understand her “obsession” with Ben, how much she yearned for him, how _often._

She still saw a bit of him in everything she did and everyone she saw, He made the world a little bit better, in the minutes he got with her, free in a new skin, escaped from the cage that he had lived in for most of his life.

BB-8 was outside, rolling around playfully on the desert hills. At least she had him, a small droid that was somehow so adorable that it had been morally impossible to sell him to Unkar Plutt, despite all of the rations that he had promised. That droid had started her entire story.

Now, she tried to eat better, but she was still a scavenger at heart. It was like going back to her childhood, mixing the packets with water and eating them.

Rey stepped into her bedroom, metal creaking beneath her toes, polished to perfection after hours of labour alongside BB-8 so that she rarely ever got a splinter.

The tears still fell, dripping down like rain on the metal, making the dust swirl around in messy puddles. She thought of Ben, and his goofy smile, face dotted with moles that, somehow, didn’t make him any less beautiful. And he was so strong, so courageous, and his relationship with the force was just like hers. They were a dyad in it, unexpected mental connections through it happening at just the worst moments on many occasions, like when he had been shirtless. She missed it all, every last bit that was just a memory of him now, like he had never existed,

Her hand trailed upon the top of her wooden cabinet, hand-crafted for her by a local artist. Such was a rarity on Jakku, where most furniture was crafted lazily out of scrap metal and the ruins of military ships, like her old home that she now had returned to and rebuilt. Rey got a grip on a corner of dark, cotton fabric, tugging it down into her arms, where goosebumps rose with the contact.

She gazed down at the sweater in her hands. It had been stretched out and worn out over time, a small hole torn into it, just like how it was when Ben had worn it, rushing to her side on Exegol. The cotton was soft to the touch.

The fabric had memories now.

She played with it between her digits, letting her hands travel across it, feeling the fleecy fabric, caressing it, trying to remember him, his energy, his aura, his smile. He could light up a room even if it was pitch black.

She laid down on the bed sheets, tears rolling down her face, messy snot escaping her nostrils as she slipped her arms through the sweater, exposing her chest.

Her left hand trailed down to her sex, fabric smooth against the short hairs that rested there, delicate and clean. She smelt of soap and nature, frizzy hair half-dry and half-wet, tickling below her shoulders.

She hadn’t cut it since Exegol.

She hadn’t done too much since Exegol, in all honesty.

Her other hand brought up another part of the garment to her red, blushing face, wiping down the tears and the snot.

Rey recalled the day that she got back to Finn and Poe, too overwhelmed and excited to even feel a trickle of the sadness she felt now. It came afterwards, when the reality of her situation sunk in, who she was and what she had learnt. She had hugged Finn as Poe laughed with the rest of the Resistance crew in the background, blood dripping from the side of her face, hair messy and clothes ruined, but so proud of herself and them for their achievements. Everyone had been happy that they had won, and she still was, but, now, she realized.

Surviving isn’t winning.

Surviving isn’t living.

With the sweater clutched around her palm, she wiggled, nose and face red as the tears dripped down, and rubbed herself, light and painful words escaping her mouth, “Ben…” They came out shaky and mumbled, voice rising at the end as the sobs grew,

She was so broken over him.

And she just couldn’t stop, touching herself and bursting into tears at every rub of the sweater against her skin.

Rey sat up, lifting the sweater up to her face and crying her heart out, all of the pain that she had held in for what seemed like eternity, while, in reality, it had only been months, almost a year.

There must have been a reason why her heart, her body, her _tears_ couldn’t forget him. She believed that he was out there, and that, someday, he would be at her doorstep, waiting for a hug,

She slipped into her clothes, wrapping her arm cloths up to her forearms and securing a turban of beige, worn-down raw silk over her hair, pulling it up over her chin to cover her mouth, only her eyes visible, bright hazel and reddened slightly but blazing with real, pure emotion. Her old hemp top was replaced with a cream-coloured one, loose viscose fabrics now tighter across her chest. She still wore her old leather belt from which a lightsaber now hung, silver and bright. It was her prized possession, because she had never felt more good about herself than when she had realized how to use her connection with the force for good. Her bottoms were loose and pale, wide on the legs and tucked into tight-fitting, tall matte fur boots of a dark brown shade, secured by wooden decorative pins in which she had hand-engraved the Resistance symbol. Tightening her goggles around her eyes, Rey made her way to the door, opening it and stepping out into the desert, sand flowy between her fingers as she leant down and ran them through it, feeling the grains slip between her thin digits again and again.

The sounds of high-pitched _beeps_ filled the air as BB-8 rolled close to her, straightening up from her crouched position in response, smiling under her thick turban. She walked in the direction of the setting dusk sun, a blazing orange on the horizon, sky far above a mix of sky blue and twilight purple shades, signalling the end of yet another day on Jakku.

The air whizzed past her, fierce and dusty, as she travelled to the same spot that the force always led her to: it was by Niima Outpost, a local junkyard for scrap metals and spare parts, and a hotspot for scavengers and even thieves.

As she trekked, eyes on the sun, she smiled sadly but with the hope of finding Ben Solo one day, even if she was a withered old woman by then.

……

Mere feet away from where Rey now stood, Ben, lost in the World Between Worlds, watched her, stretching out an arm to his love, who could not see him.

He knew that, one day, she would find him, and they would be reunited for good, somehow.

Wearing his old padawan robes, hair long and wavy, reaching his shoulders, Ben gazed at Rey longingly, whispering, “I’ll come back, sweetheart. I promise.”

……

_Compass point you anywhere, closer to me._

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this, feel free to leave kudos and a comment, if you wish :) ❤️ thank you so much for reading!


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